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By this narrative of secret history, Charles the First does not appear so weak a slave to his queen as our writers echo from each other; and those who make Henrietta so important a personage in the cabinet, appear to have been imperfectly acquainted with her real talents. Charles, indeed, was deeply enamoured of the queen, for he was inclined to strong personal attachments;[217] and “the temperance of his youth, by which he had lived so free from personal vice,” as May, the parliamentary historian expresses it, even the gay levity of Buckingham seems never, in approaching the king, to have violated. Charles admired in Henrietta all those personal graces which he himself wanted; her vivacity in conversation enlivened his own seriousness, and her gay volubility the defective utterance of his own; while the versatility of her manners relieved his own formal habits. Doubtless the queen exercised the same power over this monarch which vivacious females are privileged by nature to possess over their husbands; she was often listened to, and her suggestions were sometimes approved; but the fixed and systematic principles of the character and the government of this monarch must not be imputed to the intrigues of a mere lively and volatile woman; we must trace them to a higher source; to his own inherited conceptions of the regal rights, if we would seek for truth, and read the history of human nature in the history of Charles the First.

Long after this article was published, the subject has been more critically developed in my “Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles the First.”

[Footnote 201:
Hume, vol. vi. p. 234. Charles seems, however, to have constantly consulted his favourite minister, the Duke of Buckingham, on the subject, though his letters express clearly his own determination. In Harleian MSS., 6988, is a letter written to Buckingham, dated Hampton Court, 20th November, 1625, he declares, “I thought I would have cause enough in short time to put away the Monsieurs,” from the quarrels they would ferment between himself and his wife, or his subjects, and begs of him to acquaint “the queen-mother (Mary de Medicis) with my intention; for this being an action that may have a show of harshness, I thought it was fit to take this way, that she to whom I have had many obligations may not take it unkindly.” In another long letter, preserved among the Rawlinson MSS. in the Bodleian Library, he enters minutely into his domestic grievances–“What unkindnesses and distastes have fallen between my wife and me”–which he attributes to the “crafty counsels” of her servants. On 7th August, 1626, he writes a final letter to the duke, ordering him to send them all away, “if you can by fair means (but stick not long in disputing), otherwise force them away, driving them away like so many wild beasts, until ye have shipped them, and so the devil go with them.” ]

[Footnote 202:
Lord Hardwicke’s State-papers, II. 2, 3. ]

[Footnote 203:
Sloane MSS. 4176. ]

[Footnote 204:
Harl. MSS. 646. ]

[Footnote 205:
Ambassades du Marechal de Bassompierre, vol. iii. p. 49. ]

[Footnote 206:
A letter from Dr. Meddus to Mr. Mead, 17th Jan. 1625. Sloane MSS. 4177. ]

[Footnote 207:
Sir S. D’Ewes’s “Journal of his Life,” Harl. MS. 646. We have seen our puritanic antiquary describing the person of the queen with some warmth; but “he could not abstain from deep-fetched sighs, to consider that she wanted the knowledge of true religion,” a circumstance that Henrietta would have as zealously regretted for Sir Symonds himself! ]

[Footnote 208:
A letter to Mr. Mead, July 1, 1625. Sloane MSS. 4177. ]

[Footnote 209:
At Hampton Court there is a curious picture of Charles and Henrietta dining in the presence. This regal honour, after its interruption during the Civil Wars, was revived in 1667 by Charles the Second, as appears by “Evelyn’s Diary.” “Now did his majesty again dine in the presence, in ancient style, with music and all the court ceremonies.” ]